I wanted to get lost in Helldivers this weekend but cross-play and cross-save have been a joke http://www.ign.com/blogs/ethangach/2015/03/15/helldivers-and-the-problem-with-games-that-dont-work-as-advertised - 2 weeks ago

You might have recently heard that the creator of Heavy Rain, David Cage, thinks video games need to grow up. The founder of development studio Quantic Dream, Cage's other credits include Omikron: The Nomad Soul and Indigo Prophecy, and despite being hard at work on his upcoming Beyond Two Souls, starring indie heart-throb Ellen Page, Cage nevertheless still finds the time to criticize the rest of the industry in which he works.

“When you look at Wolfenstein in 1992 versus Call of Duty in 2012," he argued, "you realize we have made huge advances in graphics,” says Cage. “But if you look at the content, you realized we have not advanced that much.”

This is one of the things Cage thinks is keeping video games from gaining wide mainstream appeal. “Think about your friends who don't play. Think about your parents. Do they play console games? Most of the time they don't play video games. They barely know they exist.”

And who can really argue with the august designer? The best-selling and most popularized titles are indeed quite reductive and formulaic. Call of Duty regularly outsells its competition, as do many other annualized franchises like Pokemon and Assassin's Creed. But focusing only on the number of console games sold as Cage does threatens to obscure the real gaming developments of the past few years. An emphasis on the big three hardware manufacturers and triple A titles belies a much more complex and innovative gaming landscape. In other words, by looking at the most publicized titles of the past few years, Cage is missing the forest for the trees.

In every media industry it's important to distinguish between the "head" and the "long tail." As early as 2004, Wired's Chris Anderson was pointing out how giving too much attention on the best-selling products (think James Cameron's Avatar or Adele's 21) can mask the fact that the combined sales of smaller releases make up a larger share of the overall market. He called this effect the Long Tail, taking its name from a well known property of "power law" distributions.

When it comes to video games the same thing is taking place, and Cage would do well to open his eyes and look beyond the most recent FPS that sold like gangbusters to get a fuller picture of what's going on.

There's no denying the fact that of the top ten best selling games last year, all of them more or less fit Cage's definition of Peter Pan Syndrome. However, when you look at the rest of the games released in 2012, you begin to see much more variety than Cage is willing to acknowledge. Dear Esther, I Am Alive, Journey, Closure, Fez, Minecraft, Spec Ops, Papa & Yo, Retro/Grade, FTL, Dishonored, Unfinished Swan, Zero Escape, and The Walking Dead, all came out last year as well. Already in 2013 we've been blessed with Antichamber and The Cave, and won't have long to wait before The Bridge and SimCity are released also. In addition, these are only some of the better known titles--browse a digital platform like Steam for a couple minutes and you'll be able to find countless others that are attempting to explore new and interesting types of interactivity and gameplay.

This is largely what makes Cage's speech so disappointing leaves his list of recommendations for how video game development can be better so unsatisfying. It's not that the industry isn't still overcrowded with war simulators, space marine power fantasies, and Tolkien ripoffs, but rather that other developers have already found a space for something different, without limiting themselves to Cage's set of commandments.

The Beyond Two Souls director urges developers to make games that don't require guns, which is ironic because Heavy Rain is arguably a shooter, and also beside the point because most developers, especially for mobile and PC, having been doing just that for years. He also wants people to make games that have something to say, but he both ignores many of the games that are already doing this while at the same time falling back on a very limited concept of what constitutes "saying something." Does Journey have nothing to say because it's a platformer and no words are spoken? Does Spec Ops have nothing to say because it uses a gun and involves so much violence?

Indeed, what most of Cage's criticisms seem to imply is that more developers should be making games like his: playable movies informed more by Hollywood than gaming's own most memorable titles. There's nothing wrong with a game like Heavy Rain of course. It's an excellent experiment in interactive storytelling, expanding what both players and creators
have come to expect in gamepaly. It's not the only way to push the envelope though. Games like Portal, Braid, and Unfinished Swan have done that as well, each in their own unique way.

What Cage needs to realize is that gamifying film or television, and creating interactive versions of something like Silver Linings Playbook or Breaking Bad, isn't the be all and end all of video games. Such a narrow view of what the medium should aspire to will ultimately do more harm than good. If Cage was able to look past the blockbuster mentality that drives much of the console and movie markets, he would see how much gaming is actually flourishing. Just as you would misunderstand American cinema if you looked only at box office receipts and Oscar nominees, and not Sundance or the hundreds of smaller films produced each year, Cage misunderstands the current landscape of gaming when he willfully ignores the thousands of flowers blooming all around him. Before telling video games to grow up, Cage should take some time to examine the ones that already have.